1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to an apparatus for filling cigarette tubes with tobacco as well as to a system comprising such apparatus plus prepared tobacco to be used with the apparatus.
2. Discussion of the Prior Art
For self-manufacturing cigarettes, a consumer can put loose tobacco on a paper sheet, roll the paper sheet about the tobacco and glue one longitudinal edge of the paper sheet to the opposite edge. This way of rolling a cigarette can be supported by small cigarette rolling devices.
It is more convenient to use pre-fabricated cigarette tubes which can comprise a filter at one of its ends. Devices for filling such cigarette tubes with tobacco have been known for a long time.
For example, DE 20 2005 012 273 U1 discloses an apparatus for filling cigarette tubes with tobacco, which comprises an elongate filling chamber which is accessible via an elongate filling port at its top side. The filling port is surrounded by a wall, thus forming a kind of trough. In order to prepare a cigarette, a single tobacco portion is filled into that trough and transferred into the filling chamber by means of a protrusion formed at the bottom side of a lid, when that lid is placed on the top side of the trough. In this way, the tobacco is compressed. In the next step, a slider arranged in the filling chamber is moved in the longitudinal direction thereof towards an opening in an end side of the filling chamber, thus transferring the tobacco from the filling chamber via that opening into a cigarette tube supported in front of the opening. This devices works well, but its disadvantage is that it has to be re-filled with tobacco for each cigarette.
Another apparatus for filling cigarette tubes with tobacco is known from U.S. Pat. No. 2,731,971. It comprises a tobacco chamber to be filled with a single portion of tobacco. By rotating an actuating handle about an axis perpendicular to the base of the apparatus, in a first step, the tobacco is compressed inside the chamber and, in a second step, the compressed tobacco is transferred from the chamber into a cigarette tube mounted at an end side of the chamber. The compression device and the transferring device act in directions which are perpendicular to each other and are driven via leverage actuated by the rotatable handle. Improvements of this apparatus are disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,127,900 and 4,411,278. It is disadvantageous that the tobacco chamber has to be filled for each cigarette to be made. Moreover, the handle has to be rotated in order to actuate this cigarette making apparatus which means that the user has to catch the base of the apparatus with the other hand in order to prevent the apparatus from rotating as a whole.
EP 0 584 805 A1 discloses an apparatus for filling premanufactured cigarette paper tubes which uses a supply of a prepared, coherent tobacco sufficient for more than one single cigarette portion. The tobacco is stored in a vertically arranged magazine chamber. By pushing the tobacco from its top side, it can be transferred, via an elongate filling port, into a filling or compressing chamber located at the bottom side of the magazine. In the next step, a compressing bar is moved transversely to the longitudinal direction of the filling chamber in order to compress the tobacco and to cut it by means of a knife mounted at the top side of the compressing bar from the tobacco in the magazine. By actuating a slider or ejection pusher arranged in the filling chamber, the tobacco is transferred into the cigarette tube mounted at one end side of the filling chamber by means of a nozzle or tubular socket. The compression bar and the ejection pusher are operated independently by two different means so that the handling of this apparatus is not very convenient. Another disadvantage is that specially prepared tobacco has to be used.
WO 2007/082939 A1 discloses a device for filling cigarette tubes with tobacco which utilises a prepared tobacco block. The tobacco block is horizontally arranged and pushed towards a shaping block where a portion is cut by means of a vertically moving knife and formed to a shape having an essentially circular cross-section. By means of a slider, the shaped tobacco portion is transferred into a cigarette tube mounted at an end side of the shaping block. The pushing direction of the tobacco block, the moving direction of the knife and the moving direction of the slider are perpendicular to each other. The pusher can be automatically driven by a kind of ratchet device, coupled to the actuation of the shaping means (including the knife). The slider is handled independently thereof. This device requires a pre-shaped, pressed and coherent as well as wrapped tobacco block and cannot be used with ordinary loose tobacco.
Whereas the devices described so far are operated by hand, US 2007/0289601 A1 discloses a more sophisticated cigarette making apparatus with mechanical and electrical features, including an electronic display field.